Missing the (Turning) point

The erosion of democracy at an American University

Bibliographic Data

ID6084792
AuthorsAnthony Fucci, Theresa Catalano (0000-0002-7519-030X)
Year2019
Volume18
Issue3
Pages346-370
Publication date2019-05-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Language and Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1569-2159 • E-ISSN: 1569-9862
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/jlp.18055.fuc
OpenAlexW2914300320
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited19

On August 25, 2017, student members of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a right-wing conservative organization who advocates for smaller government and free market enterprise, recruited on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) campus. Members of the UNL community protested nearby. Part of the protest was recorded on video and released to social media leading to harsh public criticism that accused the university of restricting free speech and being an unsafe environment for conservative students. Drawing on cognitive linguistics (e.g. metonymy, framing) and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), this paper explores how the TPUSA incident at UNL was recontextualized in local and national media discourse, the ways in which the social actors and events were framed, and its consequences. The authors show how these representations reinforce dominant neoliberal discourses (which correlate with right-wing discourses) that negatively impact public education, providing a necessary counter to a populist political climate in which anti-intellectualism reigns

Critical discourse analysis · Criticism · Discourse analysis · Framing (construction · Ideology · Linguistics · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Public discourse · Public relations · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Literacy, Media, and Education · History · Law

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